The Occupy Movement is not associated with Ron Paul, or his supporters,

[Zorra]

in any way, shape or form, whatsoever.

I'm posting this because the PTB have been continually spewing propaganda in an effort to connect Occupy with Ron Paul in order to cloud the anti-corporate control of government Occupy message.

here it is...

It's a somewhat free country. Occupy gathers and meets in many public places. Occupy direct actions take place in many public places.

Ron Paul supporters show up at Occupy events in these public places hoping to get more publicity for Ron Paul and make it appear like the Ron Paul RW agenda has something in common with the Occupy Movement, in an effort to piggyback on Occupy's growing underground popularity. They carry their Ron Paul signs at our events for more visibility for their leader. They think they'll recruit more Ron Paul supporters by doing this.

We don't like it, and no Occupier wants them there, pushing their 1% corporate sponsored political agenda, in order that they may connect their RW bullshit with our apolitical activities that are intended as democratic means to eventually bring about the replacement of the entire existing political, social, and economic culture with a much wider sense of human community. We are the ideological opposite of Ron Paul's ideology, his supporters, and their promotion of laissez-faire capitalist-corporatist control of government.

Occupy. Has. Nothing. To. Do. With. Ron. Paul.

End of story.

thanks

[wakemewhenitsover]

1. Good call. n/t

[patrice]

2. All I've ever seen on the internet is that they have nothing to do with MoveOn, Dems, or

Progressives.

Have never seen any attempt to disavow Ron Paul.

Perhaps I should look harder; maybe I'll get around to that today.

[Zorra]

6. Here, from Jan 12

Ron Paul supporters, OWS protesters join forces to harass Gingrich, Santorum

http://www.examiner.com/conservative-in-spokane/ron-paul-supporters-ows-protesters-join-forces-to-harass-gingrich-santorum

[patrice]

10. There's this thing going on about "personal" (ahhemm ...) initiative relative to the group.

This issue appears to be pretty dynamic AS LONG AS it is openly and directly addressed in GA, which it may not be, of course, depending upon who shows up for GA, which is very important because . . .

There are all of the obvious sources of struggle within the group: inter-class prejudice and ignorance, race adaptation, religious prejudices, different education backgrounds and also quite a bit of a less obvious sub-strate of stuff, like discomfort around various sexual orientations, hatred directed at unions, widely different degrees of self-awareness . . . you name it, it's ALL there depending upon how committed people are to the process, or whether they get lost in the process and quit.

[earthside]

3. "We"???

So, you are the national spokesperson and 'decider' for occupy groups throughout the nation?

I didn't know such an authority existed.

[Zorra]

11. No, I am not a spokesperson for Occupy.

It's silly, phony 1% supporting free trade drivel like the paragraphs below, his views on separation of church and state, and his votes against human rights among other things, that enable me to speak authoritatively on the fact that the collective consciousness existent in the Occupy Movement has no relationship to the ideology, motivations, and goals of Ron Paul and his supporters.

Ron Paul explains why those who blame the free market for the financial crisis are wrong, and how excessive regulation encourages moral corruption as well as blind, irrational trust in government oversight.

The Moral Hazard of Regulation
by Ron Paul

Since the bailout bill passed, I have been frequently disturbed to hear “experts” wrongly blaming the free market for our recent economic problems and calling for more regulation. In fact, further regulation can only make things worse.
---
Is your drinking water safe, just because the government says it is? Is the internet going to magically become safer for your children if the government approves regulations on it? I would caution any parent against believing this would be the case. Nothing should take the place of your own common sense and due diligence.

These principles explain why the free market works so much better than a centrally planned economy. With central planning, everything shifts from one’s own judgment about safety, wisdom and relative benefits of a behavior, to the discretion of government bureaucrats. The question then becomes “what can I get away with,” and there will always be advantages for those who can afford lawyers to find the loopholes. The result then is that bad behavior, that would quickly fail under the free market, is propped up, protected and perpetuated, and sometimes good behavior is actually discouraged.

Regulation can actually benefit big business and corporate greed, while simultaneously killing small businesses that are the backbone of our now faltering economy. This is why I get so upset every time someone claims regulation can resolve the crisis that we are in. Rather, it will only exacerbate it.

http://www.ronpaul.com/2008-11-10/ron-paul-why-more-regulation-makes-things-worse/

[patrice]

16. Everyone is We, but there ARE practical problems in the movement with those who DON'T

respect or don't KNOW how to honor that. Anyone who does respect it is at a disadvantage around them. Authoritarian habits of a lifetime don't just disappear, because a bunch of strangers start camping together. And I HAVE seen this stuff up close and personal.

[Mosaic]

4. Ron Paul is actually a bad guy

He's a phony, but the internet is full of naive people who follow his cheesy, country bumpkin, made up crap.

[DesMoinesDem]

5. Who gets to decide who is part of the 99%?

I guess you do. If everyone that is a part of the Occupy Movement has to have the same ideology, they are not the 99%. They aren't even the majority.

[patrice]

8. I don't think that is the expectation. I think the word "horizontal" is not well

understood for ALL of its implications re ALL personal behavior within the movement, so the ones who are pro-actively trying to be horizontal, i.e ALL inclusive, are at a disadvantage around those who don't understand or don't value the horizontal model. This problem is compounded by the possibility that those who get what **BEING** horizontal means are more likely to be from the Left end of the spectrum, i.e. those who are more likely to accept their de facto exclusion for the sake of the movement. It's possible too that such persons also happen to have more verbal skills and are always, thus, at a disadvantage in a "progressive stack".

[Zorra]

33. Very well said, patrice.

That is a common problem in all types of different groups, but especially so, I think, with larger Occupy groups.

It's difficult trying to stay balanced and not get frustrated when you are trying to adhere to an ideal as much as possible but that the ideal is obviously not grasped to any reasonable extent by some, and this problem is exacerbated when those who do not grasp the horizontal ideal have ego-driven motivations, alternative agendas, and authoritarian personalities.

Stalin comes to mind as the extreme example of what happens when an authoritarian that obviously does not grasp the horizontal ideal of a group bullies their way to the top over a collective.

It's something we really need to watch out for and learn how to deal with effectively so that the horizontal ideal can be reasonably maintained and progress can be made.

Direct democracy is a pretty frustrating gig most of the time.

[HughBeaumont]

7. Good. I would think they'd not associate with economic Darwinists . . .

. . . which Paul and all but a few of his followers very much are.

[nadinbrzezinski]

9. Let me be a little more specific, before I go back to work

The Occupy General Assembly is APOLITICAL. It is the body that actually endorses anything for an occupy. They have Paulist show up at them. They have Obama fans show up at them... for god sakes they have Anarchist show up at them. From my estimation gaining consensus on endorsing any candidate at a General Assembly are about the same (right now) as there is that pigs fly.

This is a personal pet peeve of mine. And I mean a very personal pet peeve of mine. I have not ACTUALLY participated in an ACTUAL GA... but have observed enough to know that the day they actually endorse ANY candidate (though local candidates might actually get a looksie) I will eat my shoe. And this goes double for ANY NATIONAL CANDIDATE which last time I checked Ron happens to be one.

So yes, we have Ron Paul Fans, show up... hey I can testify to ONE 9.11 truther locally... by local elite media logic, yes they went there, the Occupiers are truthers.

[Zorra]

12. APOLITICAL. +1, thank you, nt

[patrice]

14. Apolitical it ain't. The real problem is that we are NOT being honest about that.

It would all be fine if everything were up front and on the table. I'll work with Paulistas, as long as no one else is excluded and EVERYONE is honest about WHY they are there and as long as everyone is proactive about the responsibility to be horizontal in all of our efforts.

[nadinbrzezinski]

21. It is insofar as it will not endorse any specific party or candidate

which is what is giving a lot of people, I might add on both sides of the aisle, major tummy aches.

[patrice]

27. Right. I don't want Occupy to endorse. Just to be honest about those forces in our midst.

Those hidden power struggles ARE the Oppressor.

[nadinbrzezinski]

29. You are confusing at times childish squables

with political in that traditional sense.

This is actually common with all social movements. Why I give them six months before we see an actual hierarchy.

Trust me, over the last four days I saw drama on one local occupation that while impressive, did not take me completely back, due to those well known dynamics. And trust me, that drama had buckus to do with traditional politics and all to do with something very different and tragic.

[patrice]

31. I don't think you know enough about the specific persons involved& their specific vulnerabilities to

make what appears to be a rather proprietary, paternalistic and authoritarian assessment of what happened in our camp, especially things going on around that flag.

I do happen to have come to know some of them quite well.

If this movement is NOT about individual persons, it's no movement at all, just another charade perpetuated by the Oppressor.

And btw, . . . wow.

[nadinbrzezinski]

32. No you are correct, I do not know the specific people involved AT YOUR CAMP

I just know PERSONALLY what has happened here in San Diego, and have observed plenty of it. I also know ENOUGH of the history of Social Movements to UNDERSTAND that there are patterns to all social movement and that includes the kinds of fights we are starting to see. I did not write that because it has not happened in the past... in fact IT HAS... like with every social movement in the course of the history of this country. Some of them precede independence, for the record.

There is a big difference. A lot of the fights that used to occur behind closed doors, are happening on Facebook.

And you are right it is not about individuals. I am just telling you that sooner or later a soft hierarchy will emerge, if nothing else out of self preservation.

Hell, I have seen a very basic sense of OpSec start to take place. And for that I say BRAVO.

Oh and the local drama involved the death of an occupier, who got reactivated, ok.

[Zorra]

26. Sounds like your Occupy has a lot of Paulistas, or a few real real bossy ones.

They're basically gone from ours, as far as I know.

Ours is largely apolitical, mostly very rEvolutionary progressive, fairly organized, and engaged in constructive activities.

Here's our schedule for Saturday Jan 14:

9:30
Two-Day Kingian Nonviolence Training
1:00pm
URBAN DEVELOPMENT = DISPOSSESSION
2:00pm
Team Meeting: Media
3:30pm
Free University (ACLU): Know your Rights Presentation
5:00pm
General Assembly
6:00pm
Outreach Team Meeting

[patrice]

28. We're doing MLK activities most of the week, in addition to all of the work group stuff. Here's our

website: http://www.occupykc.net/

[Zorra]

34. Well, then...

looks like you're making progress despite it all!

I gotta go, gotta deal with chore type stuff.

I have really enjoyed reading your insightful/informative posts in this thread.

[patrice]

39. I'm one of the first to say we ARE growing personally. It's been a struggle, LOTS of work,but almost

everyone LOVES the camp now, even though we went through a period with many pressuring us TTE "We don't need the camp. We can do this on the internet."

I'm surprised by what this is doing to everyone personally. People are telling one another that they love each other when they separate after an action or a GA . . . !

[frazzled]

23. It can't be apolitical

If Occupy groups are showing up to protest at a candidate appearance (whether it's Romney or Obama), that's political.

Everything, as we learned in the 60s, is "political." So any time the movement addresses a social or economic ill, that is a political act. Perhaps you mean the movement is independent of either the Republican and Democratic parties--and any other party (Libertarian, Green, Socialist, etc.)

[nadinbrzezinski]

24. They are insofar as what most people think, aka an alliance with

a specific political party or candidate. This is why they will happily mic check the POTUS and the candidates running against him. In fact, I am almost willing to bet, that inspite of the Paulist presence, you could get consensus to do that to Ron Paul.

After that... well when your chief goal is to go after citizens united...

[pinboy3niner]

35. The Occupy movement is nonpartisan, but it is most definitely political

It is a nonpartisan political movement.

[nadinbrzezinski]

38. Exactly but when you try to explain that

people look at you strange.

[frazzled]

37. Then you don't say it's apolitical, you say it's "unaligned" or "unaffiliated"

This is not just a semantic nicety: it's a really important distinction.

You're political if you're working against one or both parties; you're political if you are dealing with issues like Citizens United. The whole thing is nothing BUT political.

By the way, going after Citizens United is to be aligned with both the president--who called out the Supreme Court on it to their faces in his State of the Union address last January-- and with most Democratic senators, especially the initiative "Reverse Citizens United" started by Democratic senators Dick Durbin, Jeff Merkeley, Chuck Schumer, Tom Udall, and Sheldon Whitehouse," which was a campaign started way back (before OWS even got started in September) and contains 125,000 signatures.

http://petition.reversecitizensunited.com/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=5007&tag=rcu_url

[patrice]

13. Hey, I've seen the Paulistas show up with Vote RP signs and stand at the curb, branding one of

our big public activities. When I tried to do something about it, I got in trouble with Occupiers who later flew a Tea Party flag over the camp for several weeks, after that, when a homeless person flew an American flag upside down self-idenitfying "veterans" who were not camping with us were allowed to bitch us out about it, flag was taken down, and later stolen from homeless person's tent. Some of these "veterans" are also very free about saying hateful things about unions in situations in which there is not group mechanism with which to address that.

[nadinbrzezinski]

22. Yea and... for the record we had the cops take the flag here from a vet

so should I say the cops are nasty members of Occupy? Trust me, they are there more often than I am.

[patrice]

25. We have always talked to our cops & sought advice on the law/regulations.

We all know that someday we're going against them and will be arrested, but from DAY 1 their presence doing their job has indirectly helped us learn how to live in a public park with lots, a steady stream actually, of street-people and homeless. There are numerous homeless camps throughout our city. The cops have frequently made the law clear, and actually entered our camp on at least one occasion to advise us strongly about our tents, but they have also told us which bureaucrats are responsible for what issues and have encouraged our own camp-operation initiatives to be self-directing in dealing with camp issues.

[nadinbrzezinski]

30. Treasure that

EAST COUNTY RESIDENTS SPEAK OUT ON OCCUPY ARRESTS, CLAIM CHILLING EFFECT ON FREE SPEECH

http://eastcountymagazine.org/node/8370

And trust me, having covered a lot of that...

[99Forever]

15. Occupy. Has. Nothing. To. Do. With. Ron. Paul.

Worth repeating.


Occupy. Has. Nothing. To. Do. With. Ron. Paul.

[vaberella]

17. They have nothing to do with Dems or Liberals either...might be worth repeating here too. n/t

[99Forever]

18. And if you start a thread saying just that...

... I will happily repeat it.

This particular thread is addressing Ron Paul.

[patrice]

19. That's like telling people not to be who they are. IMHO, they have everything to do with ALL of them

so the problems are about how to be honestly horizontal about all of that. BS under the table doesn't do anything but bring the Oppressor in our midst.

I think the way to BEGIN to balance the differences is to ALWAYS prioritize ISSUES over politicians.

[patrice]

20. i.e. Always prioritize ISSUES over politicians - AND - Respect the "block with intent to leave" and

that would be "intent to leave this particular instance of the occupation" and NOT leave the movement. That way, those who block with intent to leave can always start another Occupation that includes whatever issue-trait that failed in its progenitor occupation.

Block with intent to leave would then become a VERY special AND LIMITED move that actually multiplies and focuses occupations.

[Ikonoklast]

36. No True Scotsman comes to mind.

If Paulistas say that they are OWS, they are OWS.

Can they get voted off the island or something?

[donheld]

40. I've been to many Occupy Denver GA's and other events.

I would Mic Check "Occupy. Has. Nothing. To. Do. With. Ron. Paul." As stated by You and Nadine We endorse nor encourage endorsing anybody. Yes we have Ron Paul people show up. Means nothing.

[bvar22]

41. Shhhhh!

You're ruing a perfectly good SwiftBoating of the OWS!



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[Zorra]

42. _^_ back to the top with you_^_ They're at it again. nt